The first sound Kenji processed was a dull, humiliating thwack!
The second was that of his own back hitting the damp grass of the clearing. The third, the unmistakable chorus of one crystalline laugh and another, wild and musical, joining in a symphony of absolute mockery.
"Situation analysis," Kenji muttered to himself, the taste of dust and grass in his mouth, the air escaping his lungs in an inefficient hiss. "Catastrophic failure in evasion protocol. The hostile asset—that is, you," he added, glaring resentfully at the figure looming over him, "has breached defenses with a force several times greater than projected."
Xiao Yue, with sweat glistening on her brow and her red hair dancing like controlled flames, wasn't even panting. She looked down at him, not with the fury of a warrior, but with the exasperated patience of a tutor whose student refuses to learn addition. In her hands, she held not a wooden sword, but a simple bamboo rod. She hadn't used a single shred of Qi.
"Stop analyzing and start moving, Golem!" Xiu Mei exclaimed from the edge of the clearing, where she sat comfortably on a cushion, nibbling on a ginseng root as if it were a candy bar. "My plants have more survival instinct than you do! Come on, Kenji, let's go! Think with your legs!"
Kenji stood up, brushing the dirt from his simple attendant's robe. His mind, a supercomputer forged in the most hostile boardrooms on planet Earth, was a whirlwind of useless calculations. He had seen the attack coming. He had analyzed the rod's angle of approach, the speed, the shift of weight in Xiao Yue's hips. He had calculated three possible counter-attacks and two evasive maneuvers with a probability of success that was practically guaranteed.
The problem was that, between the moment his brain issued the command and the moment his "deplorable corporate assets" attempted to execute it, there existed a chasm of latency so shameful he might as well have sent the order by postal mail.
"Simulated combat protocol, attempt number fourteen," Xiao Yue announced with a sigh, adopting a relaxed but alert stance. "And Kenji, for the love of the heavens, try not to think about the parabolic trajectory of the rod. Just dodge it."
"A dodge is a reaction to an already processed stimulus," Kenji retorted, his brow furrowed in pure concentration. "An optimized system anticipates the stimulus and neutralizes the threat before it materializes. Your opening on the left flank, for example, lasts 0.8 seconds. If my reaction speed were adequate, I could exploit that vulnerability and…"
Thwack!
Xiao Yue's bamboo rod moved in a blur. It wasn't a hard strike, just a quick, humiliating tap to his side that made him lose his balance and fall onto the grass again.
"Woohoo! The Golem bites the dust again!" Xiu Mei celebrated, clapping enthusiastically. "That's my girl, Yue-Yue! Show that bag of bones and logic who's boss!"
"The opening was a trap," Xiao Yue said, shaking her head. "You were so busy calculating how to attack me that you didn't see I was leading you exactly where I wanted. Your brain is brilliant, Kenji, but your body is an open book, and a very slow read."
The frustration Kenji felt was as pure and sharp as the pain of his first heart attack. It wasn't the pain of failure; it was the rage of inefficiency. His mind, his sole and most precious tool, the engine that had moved global corporations, was trapped in a chassis as useless as a cart with square wheels. It was an offense to logic.
"Enough combat for today," Xiao Yue decreed, seeing the look of utter indignation on her consultant's face. "Let's move on to phase two of the 'Managerial Asset Restructuring Protocol.'"
Phase two was, if possible, even more humiliating.
She led him to the heavy granite lion statue that had once adorned the garden entrance and now lay to one side like a trophy of her newfound strength.
"Weightlifting," she announced with a malicious smile. "It strengthens the core, improves bone density, and… it's very fun to watch."
Xiao Yue crouched and, with a grunt of effort that was more theatrical than real, lifted the statue over her head with both arms. She held it for ten seconds, her defined but not bulky muscles tensing under her radiant skin. Then she set it down on the ground with a controlled, dull thud.
"Your turn."
Kenji approached the statue. He analyzed it. He calculated the weight distribution, the optimal leverage points, the necessary grip strength. He formulated a three-phase lifting plan. Then, he crouched, placed his hands as calculated, and pulled.
The statue didn't move. Not a millimeter.
Kenji pulled again, this time applying nearly all of his estimated maximum strength. A muscle in his back protested with a sharp, treacherous pain. The stone lion seemed to laugh at him.
"Come on, Golem! Don't analyze it, lift it!" Xiu Mei shouted, dying of laughter. "Imagine it's a quarterly earnings report!"
"The mass-to-force ratio is… unfavorable," Kenji panted, giving up.
The next test was running. Xiao Yue took him to the outer training track, a long circuit that encircled the servants' complex.
"Cardiovascular endurance. Optimizes the oxygenation of biological assets," she said, mimicking his jargon with delightful cruelty. "Three laps. Try to keep up."
Xiao Yue began to run with a light, elegant jog, her breathing as calm as if she were taking a stroll. Kenji, after a quick analysis of the most efficient stride, tried to imitate her. After two hundred meters, his lungs were burning as if he had inhaled hot coals. At four hundred, a stabbing pain pierced his side. By the time he completed his first lap, gasping and with the world spinning around him, Xiao Yue had already lapped him twice, running backward so she could look at him with a mocking grin.
"Faster, CEO!" she encouraged him. "The competition is leaving us behind! Think of the market share!"
Xiu Mei, who had appeared out of nowhere at what would be the finish line, was waving a nauseatingly fragrant herb.
"The loser has to eat it!" she chirped.
Kenji stopped, resting his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. Every inhalation was an agony. His body, his useless, treacherous, deplorable body, refused to obey the directives of his mind. It was a rebellion. An insurrection of the flesh against logic.
Seeing his state of near-total collapse, Xiao Yue finally took pity on him. She approached, her breathing still perfect, and placed a hand on his back.
"Alright, enough torture for today," she said, her tone softening. "You've exceeded your projected effort capacity. A… satisfactory result."
Kenji looked at her, too exhausted to appreciate the irony of her using his own words against him.
"My hardware…" he managed to say between gasps, "…requires urgent optimization."
Sitting on the grass, under the shade of a tree, while Kenji tried to get his heart to stop sounding like a runaway war drum, Xiao Yue offered him a canteen of fresh water.
"You're not a machine, Kenji," she said quietly, the mockery gone from her voice, replaced by genuine concern. "You're a human being. And human beings have limits. You forgot that in your first life, and you almost forgot it in this one. I'm not going to let that happen to you again."
He took the water, the coolness a balm for his parched throat. He looked at her. He saw the sincerity in her golden eyes, the same sincerity he had seen when she entrusted him with her mother's legacy. The same he had seen when she kissed his cheek. It was a variable he still couldn't quantify, but which he was beginning to recognize as the most important of all.
"The restructuring protocol is… severe," he admitted, in the greatest understatement in history.
"Severe!" Xiu Mei, who had approached them, let out a cackle. "Golem, you're a walking disaster! You have the brain of a god and the body of a cooked noodle. It's the most fascinating and pathetic imbalance I've seen in my hundred years of life."
Kenji shot her a glare, or at least he tried. His lethal CEO glare lost much of its effect while he was sweating and panting on the ground.
It was then that Xiu Mei's expression changed. The mockery in her amber eyes vanished, replaced by a spark of intense, feverish concentration. She knelt in front of Kenji, completely ignoring his dignity, and grabbed his wrist, closing her eyes.
"Your pulse is weak, but your mind… I can feel it. It's like a forge, a whirlwind of thoughts, of cold logic. An energy that isn't Qi, but is just as powerful in its own way…" she murmured, more to herself than to them. "And all that mental power is trapped. Trapped in a cage of flesh and bone that cannot contain it. A cage without… without channels. No pipes for that energy to flow."
Her eyes snapped open. And in them, there was no mockery, but the glint of an idea so heretical, so insane, and so absolutely brilliant that it made the very air around them seem to vibrate.
"A surgery," she whispered, the word laden with an almost religious reverence.
Xiao Yue looked at her, not understanding. "A surgery? For what? To fix a muscle?"
"No, child, no!" Xiu Mei jumped to her feet, her three fox tails twitching with frantic energy. She began to pace in circles, gesturing with her hands as if she were kneading the air. "Not to fix him! To rebuild him! To improve him! To commit the most beautiful heresy of all!"
She looked at Kenji, but she didn't see an exhausted young man. She saw a project. The greatest challenge of her life.
"Golem," she said, her voice trembling with pure creative excitement, "your body is a desert. It has no rivers. It doesn't have the spiritual meridians that every cultivator possesses to channel Qi. That's why you can't cultivate. You are a barren land."
"A fact of which I am fully aware," Kenji replied dryly.
"But what if we could dig the rivers?" Xiu Mei exclaimed, her eyes shining like two suns. "What if we could implant you with artificial spiritual veins?"
The silence that followed was so absolute you could hear the buzz of a distant bee.
Xiao Yue stared at her as if she had gone mad. The idea was monstrous, unnatural. Spiritual veins were a gift from the heavens, something you were born with or not. No one created them.
Kenji, however, was not looking at her with horror. He was looking at her with a new, intense light in his eyes: that of the analyst who has just heard a completely disruptive market proposal.
"A prosthetic body modification to enable compatibility with the cultivation system," he murmured, his brain already processing at full speed. "The probability of success would be…"
"To hell with probability!" Xiu Mei interrupted, euphoric. "Of course it's dangerous! It's insane! It could kill you! Or turn you into a monster! Or it might work! We could use the fibers of a Crystal Heart Lotus to create the channels, the blood of a Jade Scale Serpent as a conductor, and your own mental power, your logic, as the chisel to guide the energy!"
She stopped in front of him, her face alight with the passion of her own genius.
"It wouldn't turn you into an overnight prodigy," she admitted. "Your foundations would still be those of a mortal. But it would give you the gateway. The possibility. It would give you… a user manual for your own soul. We could make you, Kenji Tanaka, the first artificial cultivator in history."
The proposal hung in the air, as brilliant and terrible as a star about to go supernova.
To turn the Golem into a god. Or a corpse.
Kenji looked at Xiao Yue, who was watching him with a mixture of horror and an incipient hope. Then he looked at Xiu Mei, the mad genius offering him a possibility he had never considered.
His mind calculated the risks, the variables, the cost. The risk of failure was extremely high. The probability of death, not insignificant. But the return on investment… the ROI of no longer being a brain trapped in a cage, of being able to control the very energy that was redefining his world… was infinite.
A slow smile, the first genuine, ambition-filled smile Xiao Yue had ever seen on him, spread across Kenji's lips.
"Xiu Mei," he said, his voice no longer that of an assistant, but that of a CEO about to approve the riskiest and most revolutionary project in history. "Prepare the business plan. We have a new product to develop."